According to reports, a TikTok influencer died while skydiving in Toronto because her reserve parachute did not have enough time to inflate.
On TikTok, Tanya Pardazi, 21, had more than 95,000 followers and two million likes under the user name philosatea.
The Canadian influencer, who was also a philosophy student at the University of Toronto, passed away on August 27 from wounds sustained during a skydive in which her parachute failed to deploy in time.
Skydive Toronto stated that a skydiving student “succumbed to fatal injuries gained from an emergency circumstance” on August 27. The organization did not identify the student; however, Pardazi’s friend of about ten years, Melody Ozgoli, confirmed via phone to CNN that Pardazi was the student who died.
BREAKING: Tanya Pardazi, a 21-year-old #TikTok influencer and Miss Canada semi-finalist, has died in a fatal #skydiving accident. pic.twitter.com/kCSkH5O3Ed
— BNN Canada (@BNNCA) September 3, 2022
The tragic news was confirmed by the South Simcoe Police Service in a release shared Sunday.
In her most recent TikTok post from August 22, Pardazi noted that she had just started taking classes with the sky diving company.
In a release, the company said that,
“The skydiver released a quickly rotating main parachute at a low altitude without the time/altitude required for the reserve parachute to inflate, “The jumper was a welcomed recent addition to the sky diving community and will be missed amongst the student’s new friends and fellow jumpers of Skydive Toronto Inc.”
Forever part of our team and in our hearts, Tanya Pardazi was one in a million pic.twitter.com/roisnXWcjI
— UTSC Cheerleading (@UTSC_cheer) August 30, 2022
“The team at Skydive Toronto Inc has been profoundly affected by this accident as they have refined their student training program for over 50 years,” the statement said.
“She really lived every second to the fullest,” her friend Melody Ozgoli said, describing Pardazi as outgoing, adventurous, open-minded, always there for others, and intelligent.
“She was definitely known for how beautiful she was, but what she was known mostly for was her incredible mind. That is the one thing that every single person that I talked to mentioned, just how bright she was, how smart she was, how much she knew,”
“This is the biggest shock to us. It’s very hard to process. It’s been a couple of days, but we still don’t even believe it,” Ozgoli said.
Pardazi was also once a semi-finalist for a Miss Canada competition, her friends said. She was laid to rest at a memorial service in Richmond Hill, Ontario on Sept. 2.
As most of the participants wore white as they sat before a white casket and watched a montage of photos from Pardazi’s life as Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” played in the background.
“At the ceremony, we all wore white because she was an angel,” Ozgoli added. “I think it was a unique thing to do, and that’s what Tanya was, she was unique, she was different. She was one of a kind, truly.”
According to a police news release, the South Simcoe Police Service and the Office of the Chief Coroner “are investigating the fatality in collaboration.”
Sources: Westernjournal Independent, People
